


Pretty sure things

by subterrain



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-23
Updated: 2011-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-27 21:21:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subterrain/pseuds/subterrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five things that Jean-Ralphio did for Tom Haverford's birthday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pretty sure things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gigantic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gigantic/gifts).



Tom's birthday is on a Friday, so the Tuesday beforehand Jean-Ralphio calls up the Glitter Factory and asks what their specials are for the weekend.

"What do you mean, specials?" the woman who answers the phone says.

"C'mon, girl," says Jean-Ralphio, ducking his head and turning towards a shoe rack to shelter his voice. He's standing in the soccer cleats section at work, and it's a lull, but he doesn't need his manager riding his jock about the cell phone policy. "Like, _specials._ For special occasions? You know what I'm saying."

"You want a special? Call McDonald's. The breakfast buffet's six ninety five, and lap dances are twenty." She hangs up on him.

Jean-Ralphio is not interested in the breakfast buffet. Lap dances, maybe, but this is not just your daily happy hour bump-n-grind. This is Big T's big day. Shit's gotta be wild.

So after his shift ends at seven, he gets in his car and drives over there. Just to, you know, see what's wild. Or has the potential for wildness.

The club is still pretty empty this early. There are a couple of old guys in tragic windbreakers at the buffet, a couple sporting a leatherier look at the bar. Jean-Ralphio perches himself at the rail by the stage, and keeps the singles fluttering for the tattooed blonde in the sailor costume dancing to Kid Cudi. It doesn't take her long to start paying attention to him. And when her set's done, he waits around until she reappears on the floor in a black ultramini and a silk wrap, and then he offers to buy her a drink.

"No thanks," she says. "I'm on a cleanse. But you can buy a dance, instead."

So that's the first thing Jean-Ralphio does for Tom's birthday: research.

\--

The second thing Jean-Ralphio does for Tom's birthday is pretend that all those whitebread work friends of his don't exist, so he doesn't have to invite them to the party where they'll just irritate the strippers and ruin the whole night.

He thinks he's being hella thoughtful on that front.

He invites Detlef, but the guy's so old he doesn't know how to answer texts, probably.

And he invites Donna. He has to leave a note under her windshield wiper, though, because she's blocked his messages on facebook, twitter, text, gchat, skype, goodreads and pinterest.

She still says no.

That's cool, though. It's cool. Jean-Ralphio and Big T and Cherry from the Glitter Factory and two of her friends. Yeah, it's cool.

\--

So that's the third thing he does for Tom's birthday: three strippers and endless lapdances in the champagne room.

Friday night rolls around and Jean-Ralphio's staggering around like a rock star with his forelock twisted low over his face and his blazer cuffs rolled up past his wrists all delicate, like he's about to dismember a partridge using a dessert fork and a tiny gold-chased dagger.

He's drunk, to be honest, before he leaves work, and he catches a cab to city hall: swans in, swans out with a tiny Haverford in tow.

He invites that chick April to come with, because she's standing right there in houndstooth tights, glaring.

Whatever, yeah, so. He swans out, with a tiny Haverford in tow.

Back into the cab. Cranking the Timbaland CD he bought for the cabbie's player. Sharing his cologne sampler – because Big T, while always dashing, always fly, could not have known he'd be whisked like a paper bag princess straight from riding desk to a mystical, fantastical, gorgeous level of existence horizoned by mounds of scented cleavage.

Jean-Ralphio scheduled two hours on that sacred plane with Cherry, and her friends Roxie and Anita. He put it on the Amex his parents gave him so he'd stop rap-busking on Main Street in Eagleton. And he has all this cash from the cash toilets at Entertainment 720, which he maybe bid on at the closing-out auction using, yeah, the Amex his parents gave him so he'd stop rap-busking on Main Street in Eagleton.

Cherry greets them as soon as they come through the door, and some secret stripper signal has Roxie and Anita on them in seconds. Roxie with her bright orange Cleopatra-cut hair and a royal blue high-cut thong, and Anita looking funereal in satin gloves and tassles. She's got a kinda Elvira look going on, and when Jean-Ralphio gazes at it appreciatively she meets his eyes, unsmiling.

"Hi Tom. Happy birthday," Cherry greets the boy like they're long-time friends, and Tom for his part grins goofily back at her.

"Let's see how happy we can make it," Roxie adds, putting a freckled arm around his shoulders. Tom's face is at about tit height on her. He looks happy about it.

"Ladies, shall we?" Jean-Ralphio waggles at them, and Cherry adjusts her silk shrug and leads the way across the floor in her five-inchers, one hand in Tom's. Roxie trails along on his other hand, and Anita pushes her inky hair over her shoulder, doesn't quite sigh, and follows.

Jean-Ralphio drops the hand that he offered to her, because she didn't see it probably, and trails after all of them.

So then he buys like, a lot of lap dances. The girls are chain-dancing Tom's lap. And then they do two, and then three dances all up on him together. Tom is drowning in lap dances like a kid in a ball pit. He smiles out from between pasties and tiny triangular scraps of fabric. He is covered in glitter. His pants look like they're sewn out of disco balls.

Jean-Ralphio holds onto his knees and leans forward attentively and occasionally flags one of the girls down to make a suggestion. Like when Anita wasn't grinding very hard and stuff. Or when he thought Cherry should ditch the shrug.

Or when he suggested they get down to the business of the five-way. Or, okay, a threeway for Tom and just a regular two-way for him and whichever one Tom doesn't want.

Anita is the one who is resting this round, sipping water while she perches nearby on the couch, so she's the one who takes it on herself to say, "Doesn't work that way, sorry."

Jean-Ralphio shakes his head. "Sexyface, I know it doesn't. But you remember that it's this man's birthday."

"I remember," Anita says, and gets up to take her turn on Tom's lap.

"JR," says Cherry, because that's what he told her to call him. "Why aren't you over here getting in on this? C'mon. C'mon." And she takes his hand and gentles him over onto the couch beside Tom. "That's right. You fellas enjoy the show."

Anita seems to be doing her best, borrowing Cherry's shrug, to make sure that the only one who can see the show is Tom.

But Jean-Ralphio doesn't mind. He makes eye contact with Cherry. Meaningful eye contact.

She takes it to mean that he wants another drink, apparently, because she pours him one out of the champagne they bottle-serve here for an amount that made even him wince, and sweeps over to hand it to him before settling into the deep, dubious couch beside him.

"We agreed," he turns his mouth to say into her ear, "You know, for his birthday. Some extras? A birthday special?"

Cherry smiles at him. "I remember we agreed that we don't do that," she says. And then she starts another lapdance, this time on him, not Tom, so he pays for it. But he doesn't enjoy it because the whole time he's wondering how he's going to make this night special for Tom if there's not going to be any three-ways or five-ways happening back here in the VIP room.

As she's finishing up he puts another couple of singles in her garter and taps his ear. She leans close, dropping back onto the couch with him, and he says, "C'mon, girl. I have another two hundred here. Show the boy a good time."

Cherry's either fighting off a genuine laugh, or she just tends to smile when she pities a dude. "Kid, I was pretty clear that we aren't escorts. Different skill set."

He makes a pleading face at her and turns his mouth into her ear again, smelling strawberry and hairspray. "But what am I going to do? The boy's depressed, his wife left him, you know. Like, six months ago."

Cherry's ever-present smile is benign and unreachable. "Right here, right now? You can buy him more lapdances," she tells him. "That's what you can do."

"But I don't want to buy more lapdances! I want a blowjob!" Jean-Ralphio complains, smacking the couch's arm for emphasis, and Tom twists his head away from Roxie's cleavage, looking concerned.

"Dude?" Tom asks. He's got sparkles in his eyebrows.

Cherry is still smiling. Roxie is watching, still grinding away on auto-pilot. Anita, perched on the coffee table in front of them, crosses her tanned legs, eyebrows up.

"Just go," says Jean-Ralphio. "All of you. Thank you, ladies. Thank you." He stands up to usher them out.

"You've still got another twenty minutes booked in here," Cherry says, and she must have some sex worker clock in her head running, because there is no watch, no phone, no time that Jean-Ralphio can see.

"I know," he says.

"You don't want us to stay?" Roxie asks, untwisting the hip of her thong, absently shuffling bills.

"Uh, yeah we do." Tom puts in. He's gaping at Jean-Ralphio from the couch, a bit of an obvious trouser-tent going on. "We definitely want them to stay!"

"No way," says Jean-Ralphio. "This isn't what I wanted. This isn't-" he puts a hand through his forelock, shuts his eyes. He is a stressbomb. He opens his eyes, and shoos at Cherry. "Go on, get out," he says.

"You're sending away the girls? What kind of birthday is this?" Tom squawks. He goes to stand up, but Jean-Ralphio puts a hand to his forehead and tips him back down into the couch. "Why are you doing this to me?" Tom cries.

Cherry is already gone, and Roxie pats Tom's head on the way out.

Anita is standing at the end of the couch, Cherry's forgotten shawl dangling from her arms. She rocks a bit on her feet: heel to toe, and the muscles in her legs flex.

"It's not nice to ask us to break the rules," she says to Jean-Ralphio. She's still smirking. She never fucking stops smirking.

"Yeah, well, it's not nice to get us all-" Jean-Ralphio starts.

She puts up a hand to stop him. "The rules say we don't touch the customers, but you know, back here you could probably get away with touching yourselves."

Jean-Ralphio blinks at her, detecting an offer. He can't quite pin down what it is. He squirms a little. "So like, you're saying,"

Anita folds a leg to perch on the edge of the couch. "I'm saying you should give your friend the birthday blowjob he deserves."

Jean-Ralphio lets out a hoarse laugh, a laugh which is pretty much identical to the one that Tom is cackling.

"Yeah, okay," Tom says.

While Jean-Ralphio says, "Yeah, _okay_."

And then they both look at each other.

Anita pushes a coil of dark hair back over her shoulder. "Well," she says. "Go on."

"I'm not-" says Jean-Ralphio.

"Either am I," Tom puts in. "My _ex-wife_ , you know-"

They both look at Anita. She rolls her eyes and drops the shawl over the couch. She picks up the champagne bottle and refills both their glasses and says, "So buy another dance from me while you do it."

It's a good suggestion.

So that's the fourth thing Jean-Ralphio does for Tom's birthday: a kinda fumbling, messy, weirdo blowjob on a faux-leather couch in the back of the Glitter Factory while Anita Foxx simmers watchfully over both of them.

The two of them don't make eye contact, or anything. There's a part of Jean-Ralphio that wants to pull up and compliment Tom when he sees the forty-dollar violet Ted Baker briefs that Tom is sporting under his trousers. Or, like, high five about Tom's long, smooth, stiff dick, because if Jean-Ralphio was a girl, he would be all about getting penetrated by that thing. The boy is packing.

But probably either of those moves would strain the bounds of their friendship and business partnership. So he maybe tries to imagine what he would want if he were receiving a blowjob on a faux-leather couch in the back of the Glitter Factory while Anita Foxx dances on a coffee table in front of him. Step 1: lots of licking. Step 2: lots of sucking. Step 3: definitely, definitely coming in his mouth. There really aren't lot of clean-up options, otherwise.

The weirdest thing for Jean-Ralphio is the noise Tom makes when he comes. It's like, a sad little sound. A needy little whine. It's a sound Jean-Ralphio recognizes. It's a sound he's made, before. So maybe it's the best thing, not the weirdest. And how Tom's hand falls in his hair when it happens.

Anita touches his shoulder when he sits up, a wrist at his wet mouth. "Looks like you're better at that than I am, anyway," she says. She's not smirking, anymore. Just smiling.

Dazedly, Jean-Ralphio finds another few bills to hand her. She takes them, picks up Cherry's shawl, and leaves with a murmured, "Happy birthday, Tommy."

For a second, they look at each other. Then they don't look at each other.

Then Jean-Ralphio says, "Waffles?"

And that's the fifth thing Jean-Ralphio does for Tom's birthday: he spends his last thirty bucks on waffles at JJ's Diner.


End file.
